Following Through Junior’s Perspective: An Analysis of Junior’s Narrative Voice
Junior, the protagonist, in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a poor Indian boy looking for hope. Sherman Alexie, the author, relates to Junior. He personally lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation and knew what life is like growing up as an American Indiana. Alexie’s character’s verbal expressions are full of sarcasm and understatement. Although their lives differ, the author and the main character are connected by their mutual culture and background. Junior introduces a nice tone to the story; however, Junior’s blunt language and sarcasm communicate the depth of his anger and pain, but also hope.
To clarify, Junior has his own way of verbal expression. He portrays anger through pain in his blunt language. He says he is “[...] just a poor-ass reservation kid [...] on the poor -ass Spokane Indian Reservation”(Alexie 7). This reveals Junior’s anger of living in the reservation. He defines poor as “unfortunate” or “not-wealthy”. When he refers to the word poor he reveals pain.
In addition, Junior expresses pain through his daily struggles. In his narrative voice, when he is mentioning his harassment and flaws, his diction contains a flow of pain. For example, he witnesses his pet’s passing due to the lack of money
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Throughout his story he uses sarcasm to reflect his anger in the same way he expresses it towards his pain. Although he mostly speaks his mind and reveals his anger and pain, he manages to bring out a brighter side to his feelings.His diction differs in the way he feels. Sherman Alexie once said, “I’m the reservation of my mind,” a line of a poem from the author Adriane C. Lewis, in his speech after winning the 2007 National Book Award. However, these words reflect Junior’s perspective because he is living with the mind of an Indian kid who just never understands he is his own
This story is written by Sherman Alexie and is a story of hope for the children of different ethnicity. Hope for them to merge in the American society. The author in the story presents himself as a child having a dream to blend in the American society and by sticking to his dream he grew among the children of his same background. Sherman is a Native American Indian and is expected to be slow and “stupid”. The story is interesting.
Everybody goes through hardship even Native American boys on the spokane reservation except this boys hardship is way harder than most people. This story is about the personal story of a Native American boy who overcomes bullying, grief, and poverty to become more then then the people around him. First off the character Arnold Spirit Jr had so many bullying experiences in this story it wasn’t even funny, so i thought bullying would be a good topic to talk about in this essay. The first bullies talked about in this story are the Andruss brothers, they were thirty year old men who bullied a teenager. In the story the Andruss brothers were introduced shortly after Arnold and his bestfriend Rowdy arrived at a powwow near thier home.
When Junior goes to this school people treat him differently he acts differently he even goes by a different name. He doesn’t want to forget about his heritage and the people he left behind but he feels like this school will get him on a better path for life. He also feels a little bit guilty about leaving his friends and family from the reservation behind and moving on in life. You can see this in a quote from the book "My name is Junior," I said. "And my name is Arnold.
The continuous loss of relatives is too harsh for a boy, so Alexie uses a kind of “slight sorrow” to let Junior realize the weakness of life in the face of death. In addition, while cleaning the cemetery later, Junior says, “Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear. But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten that reservations were meant to be death camps.”
Poverty is a very serious topic that millions of people all over the world are forced to deal with. However The Absolute Diary of a Part-Time Indian Junior makes the subject as a whole feel more light-hearted and not as serious. For example, he says, "Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” (13) Sherman Alexie uses deadpan/ understatement humor to make a light-hearted joke about growing up in poverty.
When Junior attempted to raise money to help Native Americans out of poverty, he recalls that “there were a lot more people who just called me names and slammed the door in my face,” (Alexie 79). Alongside this, when Junior was supposed to get picked up by his father after school, Junior’s dad “wasn’t sure if he’d have enough gas money. Especially if he was going to stop at the rez casino and play slot machines first,” (Alexie 87). Junior, and his family, weren’t able to gain enough income to purchase what seem to be the smaller things in life. This shows that alongside Junior, people in poverty have the even more overwhelming issue of being unable to gain enough funds to purchase smaller
Junior loses a lot of friends and family at the young age of fourteen. He gets bullied because he was born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside his skull, but he has his best friend Rowdy there to help him. Junior realizes that he needs to leave the reservation to get a better life for himself. He goes to a new school off the
Junior stated, “I thought that she’d start paying more attention to me and that everybody else would notice and then I’d become the most popular dude in the place. ”(81) He was obviously the only Indian guy in school and didn’t have many friends at all,except 2 people,Roger and Penelope. This situation turned into wanting more friends,less enemies,and wanting to impress Penelope. Junior was obviously poor and lived on the reservation.
If it were not for Junior constantly facing the adversity of being bullied he would not have made the decision to shave the Andrusses hair. This conflict influenced Junior to make actions that are risky but could end up benefiting him in the future. Junior was not the only Indian on the reservation facing adversity. In fact most of the Indians were, and a specific person noticed this and finally came out and said something. Mr. P,
Faced with many obstacles from poverty to racial stereotypes, Junior must override them if he is to make his life better than that of fellow Indians. Interestingly, rather than letting the obstacles hold him back Junior understands that his destiny is in his own hands and he must celebrate who he is even if it means fighting. In the end, we see a boy who have managed to overcome all hardships to get to the top, even if it means making tough choices such as changing schools, therefore is could be seen that race and stereotypes only made Junior
Facing struggles of life defines one’s character in life. The ability to confront one’s problems speaks volumes about their strength in character, hopefulness, and flexibility as a person. Through struggles, sacrifice, and tragedy, Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior adapts to survive difficult situations and faces his problems head-on. As he makes radical changes to his life, adapts to unfamiliar culture, and finds himself amongst misery and heartbreak, Junior demonstrates this ability to overcome wicked adversity and struggles.
Within twenty-four hours, Alexie expresses Jackson Jackson representing the Native American experiences, “Spokane Indian boy”
Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.
Mr. P advises Junior to have perseverance so, he should never give up on his hope of becoming better. Mr. P believes hope leads to greater things, a better future. Therefore, he wants Junior to have hope and leave the reservation for the greater thing, a better future. Another example is Junior's experience at Reardan. For instance, while Roger is making inappropriate comments, Junior decides to defend Indians, black people, and buffalo, so “he punched Roger in the face”(Alexie 65).
He knows that if his parents were not born into poverty, his mother would have gone to college, and his father would have become a musician. Additionally, on page eleven Junior says that his parents “dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.” Junior believes that he is trapped in this “circle” of poverty, and his dreams will be ignored just as his parents’ dreams had been. However, after Junior launches an old geometry book across a classroom, and it hits his teacher, Mr. P, in the face, Mr. P realizes something substantial about Junior: He has fought since his birth, beginning with the